Franchises must balance local advertising with maintaining a static, national brand that drives trust across every location.
Franchising allows businesses to benefit from a national-level brand and brand trust. The franchise or dealership brand then invests in advertising on a national scale, driving awareness and sales to each of its franchises. That advertising works best at a local scale – with local data like addresses, local specials, and recognizable locations.
The diverse nature of franchises has historically made that difficult to scale. Local franchises wishing to use their own budget to advertise have normally done so using digital resources delivered by the national brand. That results in paper ads and brochures, digital ad campaigns, and even television ads based on the national branding – but often slightly diverging from it. Even if locations are directly using resources, they still have to add their own text, local deals, and local information – which can result in a significant diversity of advertising approach and application.
For franchises wishing to maintain control of branding and advertising at a national level, while advertising at a local level, digital ads are key. And, with Adcombi’s hyperlocal technology – combining the ability to set up unlimited lines on the DSP with our unique polygon targeting – the parent brand stays in control of branding. Plus, with individual lines on the DSP, national advertisers can run those unique, local advertising campaigns on local budgets and ad spend.
Using Polygon Targeting to Precisely Advertise in Franchise Areas
Most franchises have specific franchise and advertising areas. These are normally defined by zip-code, with many franchises operating inside a single zip code. When those locations want to advertise, they can share ads, paper brochures, and other media – inside their franchise area.
Meeting those needs with traditional GPS targeting in the DPS has always been a challenge. For example, if you use traditional location targeting, you set a radius from a point. Therefore, there are always overlaps and areas not covered.
With Adcombi’s polygon targeting, you can use a multi-sided shape to better map advertising ranges to zip code borders. That makes it easier to target customers specifically inside the franchise's advertising area. And, that holds true where advertising areas are broken by geographic changes like rivers, valleys, mountains or highways. For example, if a quick-service restaurant is on each side of the river, simply using radius targeting might mean they advertise to each other’s customers. Switching to polygon targeting allows you to recreate the actual service area using small polygons to cover the full area.
Individual Lines on the DSP
Adcombi’s ad technology allows you to run those ads from a national account, with national-level branding, and targeted based on franchise location. With digital advertising, brands can add data like local addresses, routes, local specials or deals, and even traffic information. Most importantly, you can push ads from a central brand account, with each franchise having its own line on the DSP. Our technology automates this, allowing for nearly unlimited lines on the DSP. Therefore, every location can have its own campaign, its own budget, and its own tracking data.
National-level advertising campaigns make it possible to create consistency in branding and messages across every location. It also allows national franchises to use budget to drive sales directly to local businesses, based on the number of people in their region, quarterly sales, etc. It also allows brands to take over their own advertising and budget, while directly utilizing the resources and materials offered by the national brand.
For example, Adcombi ran a local campaign for The National Association of German Cooperative Banks (BVR) . The campaign consisted of over 800 member banks, each of which shared its own address and logo in the ads. The campaign budget was pulled from the national organization – which funded the campaigns based on quarterly sales.
In another example, Adcombi offers hyperlocal advertising to brands like Coca Cola, which allow local retailers to use their own ad budgets. So, they use their line on the DSP to leverage Coca Cola’s branding and advertising materials with their own budget to drive local sales as part of a national campaign.
If you’d like to learn more about Adcombi’s polygon targeting and how it allows franchises to deliver local ads at a national scale, get in touch. We’re happy to help.
